Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

That's a significant responsibility, but one that might not be resonating with many CEOs. As a recent study reveals, many CEOs may be talking the talk, but not walking the walk.

The global study “The Executive Disconnect: The Strategic Alignment of Customer Service,” conducted by Genesys, surveyed 927 companies in 47 countries to determine how adept companies have become at aligning the executive suite with the customer service organization. The findings revealed significant gaps between what C-level executives promise and what customer organizations actually see. Some of those gaps include:

• Most C-level executives underestimate the emphasis their organizations place on efficiency and overestimate how easy their organizations make it for customers to purchase during interactions:

55% of C-level executives believe their operations use average speed of answer as a critical metric, compared to 70% of customer service professionals.

Among C-level executives, 41% think they measure the experience in self-service by quality, rather than cost savings, but only 35% of customer service professionals think so.

• Customer care professionals and executives don’t think customer service acts mainly as a strategic function.

Only 20% of C-level executives and 20% of customer care professionals say their contact centers are strategic.

73% of C-level executives overestimate their companies’ efforts to measure customer lifetime value, compared to 60% of customer care professionals.

• There is a gap between executives who believe they are capturing feedback and views of customer service professionals.

78% of C-level executives think their company is doing a good job of collecting customer feedback and passing it on to sales. 62% of customers agree.

Aside from remaining flexible, visiting the contact center more often, listening in on calls, and bringing contact center management into strategic meetings, C-level executives can do something else to lessen this pervasive communications gap--leverage social media internally.

By transforming their businesses into Enterprise 2.0 companies can begin listening in regularly to the pulse of their enterprises. Adding employee blogs or social forums to intranets or social asset management systems, can help executives get closer to the front lines and create new opportunities to build stronger customer relationships in the long run.